


light it up

by orphan_account



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flowers always burn in Chanyeol's hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	light it up

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Deco*27's [Light Lag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnzczpOkLs4)

The first thing Chanyeol's flames ever burned was flowers.

He remembered it well. He remembered it too well, even, because he was twelve. Twelve was the age where you can remember. Twelve was the age where you stopped believing that you have some special powers but secretly hope you still do. 

In Chanyeol's case, he hoped for something like super strength or teleportation. Super strength because he was twelve and read too many comic books, teleportation because he was twelve and tend to wake up late. 

He had never thought of flames. It wasn't that he didn't want it or thought it was the worst power ever. He didn't consider it, although he learnt to appreciate it a lot more much later.

He just didn't appreciate it when he was, again, twelve, and it burned the bouquet he had bought for his mother on mother's day to ashes.

 

 

“I don't understand,” Sehun huffed in annoyance. He was helping Chanyeol sweep up ashes from the living room floor before Minseok sees the mess they made out of the floor he recently cleaned till it shone.

“Don't understand what? Why I kept burning flowers accidentally?” Chanyeol sighed. “I told you, childhood thing.”

“No, that part is fine,” Sehun swept the last of the ashes unto the tray. He stepped back to check his handiwork and found it satisfactory, leaving Chanyeol to take care of the rest. “I don't understand why you insist on bringing me flowers knowing that you can't stop burning them.” 

“It's romantic,” Chanyeol said, still sweeping the floor.

“It's stupid.”

“It's stupid romantic.”

Sehun, having deposited his tray of ashes into the bin crouched down to face Chanyeol. He lifted up Chanyeol's face and kissed him, the kind of kiss that wasn't sweet nor chaste and should be saved for the bedroom or at least, for a time when the kiss wouldn't cause Chanyeol to spill bits of ashes down on the floor. 

“I'll give you that much,” Sehun smirked. “Stupid romantic.”

 

 

He met Sehun not long after he joined Exo for the first time. On the front, Exo was a regular dorm with a strange name in the middle of Seoul. In truth, Exo was a dorm for boys like them. Boys with super powers who had nowhere else to go to, or in cases like Chanyeol, had a home but found it a lot easier to be around others like him. 

Sehun arrived when he was fourteen and Chanyeol was sixteen and had been with Exo for three months. He was small and bruised and Joonmyun, the dorm owner, had picked him up from the streets. 

When Sehun first arrived, Chanyeol never thought he would fall for him.

But he did, and Sehun let himself fall along.

 

 

“Sehun is right, though,” Baekhyun told him. “I don't understand why must it be flowers.”

Baekhyun was one of those boys who like Chanyeol, had a home but rather not go home. Unlike Chanyeol, his parents and older brother didn't know, which was their loss, truly, as Baekhyun was a real money saver on the light bulb and electricity front. 

“Because, flowers!” Chanyeol threw his arms exasperatedly. “I mean, don't you think it's romantic? Don't you want to get it for your girlfriend?”

“Sure,” Baekhyun shrugged lightly. “They don't simultaneously combust in my hands, though.” 

“There has to be a way around this,” Chanyeol said. “Like, maybe if I train enough.”

“Isn't the flowers thing some childhood thing? Maybe you should ask Lu Han-hyung to help you. Psychic and all that.”

Chanyeol blinked, surprised.

“Sometimes, you are brilliant.”

 

 

“I'm telekenetic!” Lu Han scowled. Lu Han was one of the boys who couldn't go home, at least, not really. Like Baekhyun, his parents didn't know about his powers. However, his inability to control it when he was annoyed or angry caused a scene.

He had led his parents to believe their home in Beijing was haunted with the spirits of dead ancestors turned poltergeist and that had filled his home with incense smoke, various offerings and several exorcists. 

Like now, Chanyeol eyed the floating table behind Lu Han.

“But can't you telekenetically move the memory of me burning my mother's flowers elsewhere.”

“Sure, if you want your brain splattered on your floor.”

Lu Han smiled brightly. A chair floated dangerously close to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol decided that asking Lu Han a favour when he was playing a video game was a very bad idea indeed.

 

 

He glanced over to Jongin who was Lu Han's video game partner of the day, watching Lu Han's back and sniping his enemies as Lu Han ran into the crowd. 

Jongin was one of the boys who can't go home, but he had always been quiet as to why he can't. He was in Exo before Chanyeol despite being younger and never went home for the holidays. Chanyeol never felt like he could ask.

“No, by the way,” Jongin said.

“No what?”

“If you asked a telekenetic to remove your memory, they refuse, then you ask a teleporter,” Jongin didn't even look away from his screen as he spoke. “Then you're getting colder not warmer.”

“So you can't teleport inside my brain and pluck away the memory?”

“You need a psychiatrist, hyung.”

 

 

“So, why did you come to me?” Kyungsoo asked, annoyed. Again, Chanyeol blamed that to his timing. Kyungsoo was cooking and cooking for twelve people was no easy task. 

Kyungsoo was in Exo before Chanyeol too, which was fortunate because Chanyeol could never get up as early as Kyungsoo to cook breakfast. Kyungsoo had a brother he still talked to and helped around the shop of, with or without his super strength. He never talked about his parents, though, and Chanyeol never asked.

“Jongin told me I need a psychiatrist and since your major--”

“I major in early childhood development.”

“Well, I'm still young enough right--”

“Are you five or younger?”

“You tell me I act five sometimes.”

Kyungsoo glared. 

Chanyeol excused himself before Kyungsoo put him on dishwashing duty for the next week or so, but he had a feeling he was already too late for that.

 

 

“Nothing works,” he complained to Yifan that night. Yifan was his roommate and like Lu Han, Yifan was Chinese. He apparently couldn't go home, for reasons he never mentioned, but he always seemed rather content to be in Exo.

Yifan raised his eyebrow. Chanyeol sighed.

“Right, you don't care, sorry.”

“Get him fake flowers,” Yifan said coolly. 

“It's not the same.”

“They last longer, you can say it's a symbol of your eternal love or something. A never wilting flower,” Yifan said this all flatly, his hands not even shaking, still stable on the Korean book he was concentrating on.

“You're so cheesy sometimes.”

“I really don't want to hear that from a guy who was freaking out about not being able to get his boyfriend flowers.”

 

 

Chanyeol burned the fake flowers and that activated the fire alarms, because fake flowers were made of plastic, everything in the living room smelled awful for a while.

Lu Han chucked an actual chair at him because his room was the closest to the living room.

Sehun laughed as he nursed Chanyeol's bruises and told him at least it wasn't a table.

 

 

“I really don't think you have to get Sehun flowers,” Zitao told him, quietly but firmly. “He would be content with teddy bears.”

Zitao was Sehun's best friend who arrived relatively late to Exo. He worked as a waiter and no one really knew what his power was, except for how Zitao always seemed to be able to do everything and still make his shifts. 

“I gave him six teddy bears,” Chanyeol groaned.

“Give me a seventh and you can call him Snow White.”

“You mean so you can call him Snow White,” being a boyfriend, he long realised, did not come with some of the privileges with being a best friend. 

“Yes,” Zitao smiled. “Please and thanks, hyung.”

 

 

Chanyeol brought flowers to practise from and tried the whole power of thinking positive thing. He can do this. He could master each part of his power without issue. He can throw fireballs, he can not burn things when he was angry or sad or happy. So why can't he master just burning flowers? Any flowers?

Sehun met him in the practise room, two broom and two cleaning trays for the ashes. After half an hour, none of the flowers were left. 

“Come on,” Sehun laughed. “I'll help you before Minseok-hyung comes home.”

“I'm sorry,” Chanyeol said. Frustrated, he apologised more to himself instead of to Sehun.

Sehun kissed his cheek because Sehun was no longer small and bruised and was now almost as tall as Chanyeol. 

Sehun's kiss felt cool against his skin.

“Kiss me again?” he asked, eager.

“After we clean up, hyung,” Sehun smiled. Smriked. “Or mostly, after you clean up.”

 

 

One night, Sehun took Chanyeol's hand and dragged him out of their dorm. Usually, it was Chanyeol who would do that, taking Sehun to restaurants and stores with clothes neither of them can really afford.

That night it was Sehun who did and he took Chanyeol to a quiet part of the river. 

“I want to show you what I can do now,” he said. “Watch carefully okay? I can't do it for very long.”

Chanyeol wanted to tell Sehun he didn't have to tell him that. After all, he was always watching Sehun. Instead, he nodded an okay. 

Chanyeol watched carefully as the wind Sehun controlled surrounded him and slowly, Sehun was lifted off the ground by them, hair and shirt fluttering as he floated. Seeing this, Chanyeol smiled. Sehun – his Sehun – was beautiful this way.

“That's amazing,” Chanyeol shouted. 

Sehun glanced down at him, seeming pleased.

And at the sight of Sehun, against the night sky looking down at him, Chanyeol had an idea.

 

 

“I need your help,” Chanyeol told Joonmyun. “It has something to do with the local council.”

“What did you burn now?” Joonmyun sighed. 

“Nothing!” he said, half-offended, although he knew that Joonmyun had a reason for saying that. Joonmyun was a rich boy, kind and with government connection who bailed people like him out in the early days of having their powers. He paused to think what to say next.

“Well, nothing yet anyway.”

 

 

Chanyeol took Sehun by the hand to the same quiet part of the river late at night. 

“This was my thing,” Sehun said with a joke-offended tone. 

“I want to show you what I can do too,” Chanyeol grinned. “Watch the sky.”

“The sky?” Sehun asked, eyebrows knitted together, but he did as Chanyeol told him anyway. He fixated his eyes on the starless, moonless yet clear sky of Seoul.

“Alright, three, two, one --”

Just in time, Chanyeol ignited the sky with burst of sparks and flames, each shaped like flowers, coming in various colours. The sound of it was deafening, but Sehun didn't look away. Sehun didn't cover his ears.

Sehun watched and listened. Chanyeol had been working on this show for weeks, but he didn't end up watching his own little masterpiece. He watched Sehun instead and how Sehun's skin looked a little pinker, his lips forming a smile and his eyes had this childish delight in it as they reflected the sparks and flames. 

“Fireworks,” Sehun said, a little too loudly when he show was done. 

“Fire flowers, in Japanese,” Chanyeol grinned, glad his years of watching anime is paying off, somehow.

“Stupid,” Sehun chuckled.

“Stupid romantic,” Chanyeol corrected.

“Stupid romantic,” Sehun agreed. He intertwined his fingers around Chanyeol.

It didn't burn.


End file.
